[PhotoNanfang Metropolis Daily]

A fire taking place in the wee hours yesterday in an underground parking lot of a housing estate in Luohu District damaged a total of 32 cars.

The fire was put out at 4:45 a.m., nearly three hours after the incident, according to the firefighting department.

The city’s firefighting department sent 30 fire engines and 107 firefighters for the rescue after receiving the report at around 2:25 a.m. According to a report in the Southern Metropolis Daily quoting residents, the fire probably started at a garbage site at the northwestern corner of the lot and the crawled its way through to decimate the vehicles parked nearby.

The garbage site is separated from the parking lot by wooden boards as the management had torn down the original partition to save space for parking. The parking lot and housing estate were managed by two different property management companies.

But a resident who claimed to have first discovered the fire was quoted as saying that the fire was started by an electric car parked in the middle of the vehicles.

The fire covered an area of 520 square meters and heavy smoke blackened the exterior wall of the apartment building above. Nearly 200 people were evacuated.

The heavy smoke also sent 36 people to the hospital for treatment. No one was in serious condition.

Of the 32 damaged cars, 24 were burned down to the frame and eight were partially damaged.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to a release on the city’s firefighting department’s official Weibo account.

In another development, an initial investigation showed that an electricity leak in a study caused the apartment fire in the Le Parc housing estate in Futian District on Monday, according to the Futian work safety bureau.

When the fire happened, there were no people in the apartment. Two property management employees were injured for inhaling toxic smoke and one of them was later taken to the hospital for treatment.